It’s a major accomplishment to get babies to sleep through the night, no doubt. You may think you have it made after that milestone, but after they become mobile toddlers, we desperately want to figure out how to get them to stay in bed until the crack of dawn (at least!).
There are probably a dozen “sleep training” clocks on the market ranging anywhere from about $25 to $100, but there’s really no reason to shell out the cash for one. Here are a few easy ideas for DIY-ing it:
Timer: Hook up a timer (the kind that you can use to turn your lights on and off when you go out of town) to a small table lamp that you can set up out of reach of your little one. Set it to turn on when it’s okay to get up and tell your child to stay put until the light comes on.
If you’re worried about waking her up if by some miracle she’s still asleep when it comes on, try a low wattage light bulb or use a 3-way lamp on the dimmest setting. [The lamp shown here is from IKEA ($10)]
Stickers on a Wall Clock: If you think they can tell the big hand from the little hand, get a big office wall clock (like the one at right) and put green stickers over or beside the numbers that indicate when it’s okay to get up. Then tell your child that when the little hand points to a red number, it’s okay to rise and shine.
Those little round stickers they sell for yard sale pricing or file folder coding work well. If you like, you can put red stickers over the numbers that are too early.
If you’re in doubt about the big hand vs. little hand thing, try taking the plastic face off the clock and putting a dab of bright paint on the litte hand to distinguish them.
Digital Clock: When they learn their numbers, you can use a digital clock and teach them to stay in bed until the first number is a 7, 8, or whatever you can handle.
I’ll bet you can brainstorm even more ideas for making your own sleep training clock! Tell us about ‘em in the comments!
We use a travel light timer with an LED night light attached to it that is set to be on all night, then go off at wake-up time. It’s unobtrusive, not too bright, and cool to the touch.
I’d recommend to anyone starting this with a night light to turn the light on for bedtime about an hour and a half earlier than you think you need it. That way, on days you try to move bedtime up, for illness, particular crankiness, whatever, you aren’t thwarted by your own system. If you have to “fix” the light “because it didn’t come on” on an early night, you decrease trust in the system and will face early am complaints that it’s broken and not going off.
that is exactly what we do, too. it works great!
Holy cow. How did people EVER raise children without a clock to tell the kid when it’s okay to get up? Sheesh. I have never heard of such a thing.
Well, I remember my mom yelling at times, spanking frequently, and looking back, seeming generally frazzled. If I can give my son a fun way to control when he gets up rather than both of us being frustrated, then why not. Sleep studies indicate too that the human brain is highly responsive to sleep patterns, so a little person likely only relies on the clock for a short time…once they get adequate rest on a solid schedule they will likely begin naturally sleeping and waking on that schedule anyway. The more stress you remove from the process the more rest everyone gets and the sooner healthy sleep starts to occur naturally. Why not try something different than what generations before us did??
Genius! Thanks for sharing!
So glad for a solution that doesn’t cost too much!
We love the “good nite lite”. It displays a moon during “sleeping hours” and a sun when it is ok to get up.
http://www.goodnitelite.com/